It's the early Eighties, and Dave Benett is on an assignment in Southend, photographing a gang of skinheads who have travelled to the sleepy Essex seaside town in order to wreak havoc. He has parked his MGB near the station, and walked briskly down to the sea front, primed for what these days would simply be called 'content capture'.
The police have herded the skins into a dead end, waiting for the next train bound for London. This was a regular occurrence, so much so that the visiting yobs would only buy a one-way ticket, knowing full well that the police would press-gang them onto the train for the return journey.
At one point the police decide to pull one of the ringleaders out of the throng, and as they do so, Benett takes a picture of the hooligan as he kicks and rails at his attackers.
Click.
And as Benett takes his picture - one frame - a voice behind him says, "Great shot, kid."
When Benett turned round, which he did immediately, he saw the praise had come from Don McCullin, perhaps the greatest war photographer of all time, who was covering the same story for The Sunday Times. Benett smiles as he tells the story, happy in the knowledge that he had used his skills in a way that perhaps McCullin couldn't have imagined at the time.
Benett's journey, like many of his generation, has been something of a series of happy accidents. He was born in 1958 in Mauritius, the son of a general surgeon and an Irish nurse. When his father moved back to England in 1970, with his second wife, he was seconded to Walton Prison in Liver- pool, where the young Benett attended The Institute, Paul McCartney's old school. On his guard, and out-of-sorts, the young Benett became something of a hooligan. "It was all about self-preservation," he says. "If you weren't white, you were picked on, and I wasn't white. I couldn't beat them, so I joined them."
